|
But are we to think of this Authentic Being as, itself,
present, or does it remain detached, omnipresent in the sense
only that powers from it enter everywhere?
Under the theory of presence by powers, souls are described as
rays; the source remains self-locked and these are flung forth to
impinge upon particular living things.
Now, in beings whose unity does not reproduce the entire nature
of that principle, any presence is presence of an emanant power:
even this, however, does not mean that the principle is less than
integrally present; it is not sundered from the power which it
has uttered; all is offered, but the recipient is able to take
only so much. But in Beings in which the plenitude of these
powers is manifested, there clearly the Authentic itself is
present, though still as remaining distinct; it is distinct in
that, becoming the informing principle of some definite thing, it
would abdicate from its standing as the total and from its
uttermost self-abiding and would belong, in some mode of
accident, to another thing as well. Still it is not the property
of what may seek to join with it; it chooses where it will and
enters as the participant's power may allow, but it does not
become a chattel; it remains the quested and so in another sense
never passes over. There is nothing disquieting in omnipresence
after this mode where there is no appropriation: in the same
accidental way, we may reasonably put it, soul concurs with body,
but it is soul self-holding, not inbound with Matter, free even
of the body which it has illuminated through and through.
Nor does the placelessness of Being make it surprising that it be
present universally to things of place; on the contrary, the
wonder would be- the more than wonder, the impossibility- if from
a place of its own it were present to other things in their
place, or if having place it were present at all- and, especially
present, as we assert, integrally.
But set it outside of place, and reason tells us that it will be
present entire where it is present at all and that, present to
the total, it must be present in the same completeness to every
several unity; otherwise something of it is here and something
there, and at once it is fragmentary, it is body.
How can we so dispart Being? We cannot break Life into parts; if
the total was Life, the fragment is not. But we do not thus
sunder Intelligence, one intelligence in this man, another in
that? No; such a fragment would not be Intelligence. But the
Being of the individual? Once more, if the total thing is Being,
then a fragment could not be. Are we told that in a body, a total
of parts, every member is also a body? But here we are dividing
not body but a particular quantity of body, each of those
divisions being described as body in virtue of possessing the
Form or Idea that constitutes body; and this Idea has no
magnitude, is incapable of magnitude.
|
|